by Rhys Hughes
At this point Abortia gave up. She could make no more proposals. Her brain had been drained of notions.
Hapi’s suggestions were even more limited . . .
Finally Twisthorn Bellow spoke up. His voice was calm and measured and quite unlike the voice a living stick of dynamite might be expected to have. It didn’t hiss or reach a deafening crescendo. The professor listened to the golem’s proposal with slowly mounting excitement. The clay man seemed to be on to something!
“Gadzooks! That’s a perfect course of action!”
“But if his plan works, France will be saved just as thoroughly as if we followed my idea,” protested Abortia.
“True, but the paperwork will be much less. No need to move anyone anywhere. No need even to make the sun’s condition public. So I’m not showing favouritism, my dear.”
Abortia squinted. “Thanks. That makes me feel better.”
The professor leaned over and patted her minuscule thigh. “Of course it does, my lady. Now be a good embryo and brew some coffee for the men, will you? Thanks sweetheart.”
Uncertain of whether she was a victim of gender discrimination or not, Abortia powered her waldo out of the office and trundled down one of the corridors towards the kitchen.
Meanwhile the professor tugged his unyielding nose. “There’s one tiny problem with your scheme, Twisty. It concerns the fact you can’t go near naked flames. You’d detonate.”
Twisthorn frowned. Then his eyes lit up. “Wait a minute! You told me about the monsters you made before I came along. Maybe we can use one of your failed experiments . . . ”
And he muttered his idea in a low voice.
“Why are you whispering?” the professor asked. “There’s nobody else in the building apart from Abortia.”
“Sorry, boss, it’s just that I often get the feeling we’re being spied on. Do you think Dean Nutt installed secret microphones about the place? Do you think he’s listening now?”
“I doubt he had the time to do anything like that, but I’ll get Hapi to do a proper search tomorrow.”
“Cool!” concurred Hapi. “Richie.”
“Richie’s got nothing to do with it!” snapped the professor. “Who the hell is he anyway? No, it doesn’t matter. Let’s get moving on Mr Bellow’s idea. We’ll wait for coffee first.”
“Coffee first, milk no sugar. What then, boss?”
“Then to the eerie storeroom where I keep the carcasses of my failed experiments. After that, we’ll proceed directly to my sewing machine. It’s an antique model that I inherited from my mother. Apparently she got it from a chap known as the Comte de Lautréamont. Not sure who he was, but I hope he wasn’t French!”
“I fear he might have been,” muttered Twisthorn.
* * * * *
The sun began to swell in one particular spot. This spot was an area on the skin of the sun about the size of the Earth. It was a rapidly growing tumour, a malign blob of swirling fire, the direct result of the sun never taking precautions against its own solar energy. It throbbed steadily and kept growing larger, and soon it seemed that the sun was a circular door with a doorknob, but this was a cruel illusion, for the door led nowhere and the knob wouldn’t turn even if the claw of a gigantic devil reached out to test if the sun was locked.
Devils don’t really grow that big, of course.
It was just a figure of speech . . .
Men use figures of speech because they can’t run the risk of not using them. That’s one theory anyway.
Devils never exaggerate the way that men do. Devils are an extreme class of being, at the opposite end of the spectrum to angels, with men in between, but there’s another class of entity exactly midway between men and devils. They are amoral, intangible and capricious. They are immune to skin cancer and don’t need to wear sunhats. They can be blue. Usually they live inside old copper lamps.
But what are they? Ah, there’s the rub!
* * * * *
Twisthorn swung his kpinga idly. It was perilous the way he played with it. Luckily, it was sheathed in a scabbard. Unluckily, the scabbard was an illusion, just brown paint on the blades.
“You’ll take your thumb off, if you’re not careful!”
Twisthorn smiled down at Abortia. “Don’t worry. Just concentrate on sewing those little skins together.”
“You’ll have to fix the sewing machine first.”
“Can you really repair it?” blinked Cherlomsky. “I mean, that brolly is rammed up there pretty damn hard . . . ”
“You bet! Watch this, boss!”
His face turning green with the effort, Twisthorn succeeded in pulling out the umbrella. He brandished it for a moment like a trophy, then cast it disdainfully into the incinerator chute.
“Cool!” said Hapi Daze.
The professor chuckled. “Only a golem would ever be strong enough for that! Thankfully you are one!”
Abortia began sewing. Within a few hours Twisthorn was equipped for his mission in a special new suit . . .
* * * * *
He left the Agency and blew a three-pronged kiss at Cherlomsky, Abortia and Hapi, then caught a bus to Gatwick Airport. Waiting in the departure lounge he felt vaguely uneasy that his sword-stick wasn’t with him. He had been compelled to leave it behind. New airport rules meant that objects designed for murder weren’t allowed on aeroplanes as hand luggage, a ludicrous regulation that served to demonstrate how decadent Britain had become since its Empire days.
The aeroplane took off into a cloudy sky, a sky that matched his own skin colour, but quickly it passed through the pearly mass into pure blue. The flight was uneventful, though Twisthorn managed to grope a flight stewardess when she leaned over him to pour his coffee. She smiled but offered no further invitation, so he returned his attention to the vista out of the window. Bare mountains.
He landed in Tehran, capital of Iran, and took a taxi to the main market. People stared at him because he was a foreigner. Or maybe because he was a golem. Or both.
He searched the stalls until he found what he wanted.
The price was high, almost too high.
But he had massive funds at his disposal . . .
He made the transaction and returned to the airport. The flight back to London was even more boring than the outward journey to Iran. Without a single stewardess available for groping he had to settle for a steward. A saxophone played somewhere . . .
The professor met him at the airport. They drove straight to the nearest good hospital. More money exchanged hands. Then Twisthorn puffed out his great clay cheeks and said:
“That’s our work done. Now we must wait.”
* * * * *
The team sat quietly in one of the many Agency laboratories. At last the telephone rang and the professor picked it up. He listened. Then a grin broke across his dedicated face.
“The Sunbeam Research Centre has confirmed that the operation was a success! The sun’s safe again!”
“Simply marvellous, boss!” cried Twisthorn.
Abortia frowned. “But I still don’t understand what happened. You all seem to know exactly what’s going on, but you haven’t told me anything. I hope it’s not because I’m female that you’re keeping secrets from me? I want to know the full story.”
“By all means, young lady!” roared Cherlomsky. “You are our equal. I will tolerate no sexism here!”
He leaned forward to pinch her cheek.
“Why did I have to use the sewing machine to make a garment for the golem from the tiny skins of a creature called the pyrallis? That was hard work, by the way,” Abortia said.
“Quite simple,” Twisthorn replied. “The pyrallis is a creature that lives in fire, a cross between a miniature dragon and a dragonfly. The professor made a swarm of them years ago but they all died. I’m a stick of dynamite and always need shielding from naked flames, so the suit you tailored for me was crucial to my mission.”
“Yes, but what was your mission?”
Twisthorn la
ughed. “I purchased some afrits in the land where they are most common. Incredibly expensive, though. Our government has footed the bill, but to avoid bankruptcy they’ve had to cut public spending to an extraordinary degree. There will be no more social security from now on! That doesn’t matter, of course . . . ”
“True,” nodded the professor. “Poor people are scum. They betray the ideals of the British Empire. I would like to see them dead and the Union Jack flag dipped in their blood.”
“Afrits?” wondered Abortia.
The golem smiled. “Fire genies. The marid is the most powerful type of genie but unsuitable to my purpose because they dwell only in water. I guessed an afrit could be taught basic surgical techniques, so I brought them back to London and had them trained by cancer specialists. Then I sent them towards the sun to carry out the operation. Only a fire genie is sufficiently flame-proof for that!”
“That’s an amazing story. Thank you!” said Abortia.
“The afrits severed the bulging tumour with fire scalpels and stopped the cancer spreading to the corona!”
“Well that really is good news!”
The professor made a wry face. “The Sunbeam Research Centre told me one other thing . . . It seems the tumour was cast free into space and cooled into a globe the same size as the Earth. It has taken up an orbit on the other side of the sun from us.”
“A new planet!” whistled Twisthorn.
“Yes,” continued Cherlomsky, “and they are already debating what name to give it. Antichthon is the favourite so far—the Counter Earth! I wonder if life will evolve on it?”
“Might this have happened before?” asked the golem. “I mean, in Ancient Greek mythology the god Phœbus had a son called Phaëton and wasn’t there supposed to be a planet that once orbited between Mars and Jupiter with the same name?”
“Do believe there was!” cried the professor.
“Or maybe those tumours weren’t really tumours,” said Abortia.
“What?” frowned Cherlomsky.
“Kindly elaborate,” grumbled Twisthorn.
“Well it’s just a thought, but . . . What if they were wing buds instead of cancerous growths? What if the sun was supposed to grow wings and fly off to another part of the galaxy?”
The professor and the golem exchanged glances.
“We could all really do with a cup of coffee now,” said the professor, jutting his jaw in her direction.
While she was out of the room, Twisthorn wiped his cheeks. “She also induces tears of mirth, that gal!”
“Don’t be absurd. Golems don’t cry!”
But Twisthorn was still laughing and weeping.
“Cool!” commented Hapi.
“Listen,” said the professor. “We ought to celebrate properly. Coffee’s not strong enough for a proper party. I have a bottle of something potent we can add to our cups. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion for more than a decade. A rare vintage.”
“Sparkling wine? Cider? Good British ale?”
The professor reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and held up a flask. “Better than those . . . Ether!”
Twisthorn licked his lips. “Why wait for the coffee?”
By the time Abortia returned from the kitchen with a loaded tray, the other team members were on the floor.
THE POTS OF PAN
Shylock Cherlomsky and Twisthorn Bellow were talking about music and why it could be considered one of the most important reasons that a proud upstanding nation like Britain went into such sad decline during the latter half of the Twentieth Century.
“All music is disgusting,” the professor declared, “but the modern kind is more despicable than the old.”
Twisthorn slowly digested this statement.
“What is so bad about it, boss? I still don’t understand why we classify musicians in the same bracket as vampires, werewolves, ghouls and other species of lurid abomination.”
The professor sighed and nodded.
“I knew the time would come one day for me to explain it to you. The beings you have just alluded to are beyond logic. In other words, nobody with common sense can believe they exist, which makes the fact they do exist even more unbearable . . . ”
“Sure, that’s obvious,” agreed Twisthorn.
“They are against everything the British Empire stood for—rationality, monarchy, unruffled-ness, semi-Puritanism, the patriarchal urge to impose order and collect unfair taxes.”
“I see. And musicians are also beyond logic?”
“That’s correct, Twisty. Beyond logic and thus against the interests of Britain. Consider the song ‘All Along the Watchtower’ by Bob Dylan. By definition a watchtower is a vertical structure providing little opportunity for movement on the horizontal plane. How can anything proceed along it? There simply isn’t room!”
“So Dylan wasn’t one of the good guys?”
The professor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, dear boy. If only he had entitled his song ‘Up and Down the Watchtower’ . . . But he wasn’t British, which explains a lot. The overriding vertical component of the edifice in question meant nothing to him.”
“The swine! I hope I never hear his song!”
* * * * *
Later that evening they were called out to investigate and smash a coven of witches who had gathered for a Sabbat in an ancient wood of oak trees. The coven consisted of thirteen young lovely naked ladies and they held hands and danced in a circle and called on the local nature spirits to heal the victims of an epidemic—mainly children and elderly folks—that had recently struck a number of nearby villages. The professor and the golem watched silently for a minute.
“It may seem they have kind intentions, but they are dabbling with the occult,” whispered Cherlomsky.
“So they aren’t good guys?” asked Twisthorn.
“Absolutely not, my lad . . . ”
Twisthorn Bellow threw back his head and emitted a roar that brought the Sabbat to an immediate halt. Then he blindly hurled his kpinga into the glade and rushed after it.
The many-bladed sword took off an arm and leg, spraying blood over an altar decked with flowers.
Then the golem was tearing heads off bodies, breaking spines, ripping flesh off bones, stamping skulls and overturning the altar, spraying loose teeth and eyes high into the air.
“Shall I spare any of them, boss?” he called.
The professor pulled his silver nose. “We were paid to take them alive, but I don’t feel like doing that.”
“I’ll slaughter them all then. This is easy!”
And it was. Petals drifted.
* * * * *
Back at headquarters, Abortia Stake listened with a frown to the golem’s account of what had happened.
“But they sound like white witches!” she objected.
Twisthorn shrugged. “Ah well! I had to do what the professor asked me, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“I guess not,” reluctantly agreed Abortia.
But the professor had overheard.
“White or black, it’s all the same. You of all people, Abortia, should know there’s no colour-based discrimination when it comes to the work we do here. Witches must die!”
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were in the next room.”
“Yes, I was debriefing Hapi.”
The mutant hand scuttled in behind Cherlomsky.
“Richie! Cool!” it squeaked.
“Hey, where have you been?” shouted Twisthorn. “I haven’t seen you around for an entire week.”
Cherlomsky said, “On a mission of his own.”
“Cool!” added the hand.
“Doing what?” the golem asked the professor.
“Hapi has been finger-clicking harpies out of the air. Harpy shooting season has begun in Chaud-Mellé—that’s an independent city-state in the Alps—and we decided to take this chance of wiping them out. They may be a protected species at other times of the year but not right now. Rifles and muskets proved
no match for Hapi’s telekinesis! Seventeen thousand harpies he bagged in total . . . ”
“Is the species extinct now?” Twisthorn asked.
“Hard to say. Maybe a few escaped, but even if they did and manage to breed, they won’t be making a strong comeback for decades. The ruler of Chaud-Mellé is furious!”
“Nice work, Hapi,” said Twisthorn Bellow.
“Calls for a celebration,” Cherlomsky added. “Shall we break open a flask of ether? Which reminds me: why don’t you make us some coffee, Abortia, there’s a good girl.”
“I don’t want more coffee, boss,” said Twisthorn.
Hapi wagged his finger to indicate that he too didn’t care for another caffeine hit. The professor pouted.
“Well in that case, why not prepare some supper for the lot of us, my dear? Mushroom risotto or something along those lines. Hurry up now and get those pots steaming!”
* * * * *
They swigged ether and Cherlomsky became nostalgic. He wanted to talk about his idyllic childhood in a rural cottage, the farmyard animals he had kidnapped from neighbours. For a month he’d kept a goat in his bathroom and the horns of the beast served as convenient toilet roll holders, but his parents didn’t approve and made him set it loose. He later found the beast stuck up a tree with a magpie jammed down its throat. Tragic accident or deliberate act of mindless butchery?
“Every night since, I have dreamed about that goat but never about the magpie. I am still traumatised.”
Twisthorn refilled his own glass. “Talking about goats reminds me of something I saw tonight, boss.”
“Really? Tell us what it was, Twisty!”
“I thought I glimpsed a figure in the shadows during the massacre. A man with goat’s horns. Not a devil but something older, more primeval, holding a flute of many reeds.”
The professor frowned. “Panpipes, you mean?”
